Euthius

Euthius is known only as a correspondent of Nilus of Ancyra (d. c. 430), addressed in six short letters within the early-5th-century Ancyran milieu of Galatia, Asia Minor. The letters' addresses identify him as an officer attached to the praetorian prefect's office and also style him a tribune (a military or administrative rank), so he appears to have been a state official rather than a cleric. The tenor of the correspondence is sharply admonitory: Nilus repeatedly upbraids him for stinginess, misanthropy, and insatiable acquisitiveness, comparing such a grasping mind to a wolf that will never befriend a sheep, and casts his own rebukes as a faithful 'barking dog' of affection meant to shame Euthius out of his hatred of mankind; one letter (98) consoles him in a grief that, Nilus says, will win him remission of his offenses. Beyond this role as the recipient of Nilus's moral correction, he is otherwise unattested.